[lbo-talk] The War on the Car-driver

James Heartfield Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Mon Nov 14 11:45:34 PST 2005


Sandwichman writes:

"Almost every thing in you local store has traveled thousands of miles by truck, plane and/or container ship. And the fuel to ship it with has been massively subsidized."

And that is a good thing, isn't it? Without those subsidies, the 260 million Americans, and 377 M west Europeans would for the most part, starve.

It is just sheer utopianism to think that you could take the internal combustion engine out of the food chain without substantially reducing its output. (setting aside the coming supercession of the gasoline-driven car).

By all means propose a planned population reduction (though I think you are in dubious company if you do), but that is at least 70 years away.

Until then, people have to eat. Or you could say, like Pol Pot, that the overwhelmingly urban (and increasingly suburban) population should move out into the countryside and feed themselves, but that experiment has been shown to be pretty deadly.

"The agricultural output that sustains us is based on the motorized application of increasing quantities of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides because these things lose their effectiveness as they come to disrupt the natural systems of soil regeneration and pest control."

The "natural systems of soil regeneration and pest control" would never be able to sustain a human population of more than a few million, let alone six billion. Increased agricultural output, and its corollary, much more extensive distribution systems come about by modifying natural systems for human ends.

"And overwhelminly, you think it's a good thing that the commodity, labour power, travels to work by car?"

Well, that's a "when did you stop beating your wife" question, isn't it. I would prefer that labour was not alienated. But setting aside that possibility, it is preferable to drive twenty miles that you have to than to walk them. Why don't you go round some working class neighbourhoods and ask people if they are willing to trade their cars in for bicycles.



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